The Ox-Bow Incident

The Ox‑bow Incident

The Ox‑bow Incident, whispered on a wind‑blown day,
A patch of earth where the flat land turns toward the water,
Where tin‑dust sighs like a low hymn and the cattle’s hoof‑beat
Murmurs the promise of a distant, foreboding rush.

In that hush, a boy of seventeen, Dan Garth by name,
Stood in the shadow of the bend, his eyes an unlit sea.
The constable’s voice, a low, creaking draught of sheep‑barn timber,
Declared, “No law is higher than the call of five hands clenched together.”

The town, a knot of desperate language, twined around the rumor,
Like a web spun by a spider in a howling gale, ready to snap.
The fishermen’s catch, the grain‑turning wind, all vanished beneath the surf of a lone shout.

The small law‑beans, those who had once measured on the scales of mercy,
Broke their oaths to the darkness of the Wild West, which had always spoken in the tongue of “every man can breathe the law.”

On that clearing, where the name Ox‑bow would hang in memory like a dead flag,
A posse danced in the dusk, with ropes to snare the old noble truth,
Defence prevailed on a single note: a boy touched only by rumor, left to be the tonic of mortal great guilt.

The story of that reach‑up and those cold‑faced shackles
Lingers like a stubborn cloud, misfired on the western horizon.
Honor fell, and the laws of the plains shook their bones under the weight of prejudice.

May the world keep the stone‑cold no‑goals of an unearned accusation barred,
That no law can be carved in the dark and left to be patrolled alone.
So the name always ends softly, lower the wind, in quiet we find redemption –
A whisper still: “Never more a live‑law listener, not for the Ox‑bow they will fear.”